


Undershining

by dakeyras



Series: Naruto Fantasy Week 2020 Oneshots [4]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Crimes & Criminals, Gen, Kumogakure | Hidden Cloud Village, Magic, Naruto Fantasy Week, Robbing A Wizard Is Not Advised
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:40:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25069288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dakeyras/pseuds/dakeyras
Summary: Living in the grime of the Undercity, Darui relies on his gift - and his flexible morals - to get by. But now his successes are catching up to him. Can he survive a heist in the City Above?
Relationships: Darui & Samui (Naruto)
Series: Naruto Fantasy Week 2020 Oneshots [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1809535
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1
Collections: Naruto Fantasy Week 2020





	Undershining

**Author's Note:**

> For Naruto Fantasy Week 2020: Prompt is 'Urban Fantasy'
> 
> Each submission I'm making has a different setting, style and genre.

The City of Clouds is beautiful from the air. Great spires of rock with sprawling mansions on top, and towering skyscrapers reaching out of the valleys, all connected by gossamer bridges and painted with liquid gold by the sunset.

Or so Darui’s always been told.

The City Above, as the inhabitants of the Undercity call it, is hidden by the thick layer of smog that the factories and furnaces churn out, all day every day. While nobles and great wizards dine on silver plates, sleep in feather beds, and ponder the mysteries of the universe, Darui scrapes by on his wits alone.

“Come on, Darui,” Samui calls. “We don’t want to be late.”

He and Samui aren’t partners, but they’ve worked together more often than not in the past year. He’s shorter, with a shock of white hair on a dark face, and she’s a pale blonde. They get on well, which is the important thing.

He hurries after her, climbing over mountains of refuse and pushing through crowds of the unfortunates who live down here. It’s the noon shift change, so a heaving mass of humanity is crammed into the streets, looking to either get to work or head home for food and sleep. It’s hard to make an honest living down here.

Darui hasn’t done an honest day’s work in his life, though. Hence tonight’s meeting. If all goes well, perhaps he can even buy his way into the City Above.

After forcing their way down a crooked alley that cuts around the back of a foul-smelling fish cannery, Darui and Samui slip into an unmarked eating house. There are only three patrons, and Darui smells the telltale acrid scent of recent magic. All three are mages, and going by their poorly-hidden staves, their gifts revolve around combat.

Samui greets the cook, who waves them through to a meeting room in the back. Inside are some wooden stools, two more mages, and a plain man with scruffy greying hair and a faded eyepatch. He is holding a bared knife in his good hand, and his eye is as cold as the sea in winter. “Sit,” he orders, and Darui and Samui obey.

There’s silence for a few moments. Darui is about to break it but the man gestures for him to shush. Only after one of the men in the eating-house pokes his head around the doorway and gives the all-clear does the meeting begin.

“I hear you’re both mages,” the greying man says. He waits for them to murmur agreement before he continues. “I have an opportunity for you.”

Darui shifts in his seat. There are rumours about this man, rumours and nothing more. Anyone who dares to make  _ allegations _ just… disappears. When he makes an offer, it’s a bad idea to turn it down. “Anything you ask us to do, we’re happy to.”

“This isn’t something  _ I’m _ asking you to do. The distinction is important.” The greying man tucks his knife away, but it doesn’t relax Darui at all. He tries to avoid making eye contact, but the man leans forward, capturing his gaze. “I am going to speculate out loud about a secret passage to the City Above. You will not reveal – to anyone, under any circumstances – where you heard this information. Is that clear?”

Samui smiles nervously. “Yes, of course.”

“Anything you find over the next few days, bring it to me, and I’ll see you get a fair price for it.”

Darui frowns. So this is a robbery that cannot be laid at their employer’s door. The value must be immense, for him to take such a risk.

“Depending on what you find, I might be extremely grateful,” the greying man says, and reaches into his coat. He pulls out a folded handkerchief and opens it. Inside are a few locks of hair. Darui’s hair.

Darui feels his heart race as he realises what this means. He’s being given a chance to get free and clear of this life. That small bundle has been a leash around his neck ever since he tried to steal from one of the man’s guards as a twelve-year-old.

One mistake can ruin a man’s whole life, he knows. But maybe this is a chance to change that.

“I am most interested in items of arcane power, if you get the chance to collect any. Failing that, put some gold in my hands.” The next ten minutes are spent describing in painstaking detail the exact route Darui and Samui are to take. 

“I’m not surprised the Boss is into something so dangerous, but I’m a bit shocked he wanted us involved. We’re good thieves, but the City Above – that’s hardly something we’re suited for, is it?” Darui says.

Samui grabs his shoulder. “Don’t call him that! You know how he feels about names and nicknames.”

Darui shudders. The man they’d just met with has used his stable of mages to devastating effect, seizing control of a hefty slice of the Undercity’s criminal underbelly. Names, and in one case a codename, were enough for him to target his rivals with lethal spells. The man with greying hair and a sharp knife is willing to go to extreme lengths to avoid the same fate.

Hair is a much stronger link than just a name, Darui knows, and his scalp crawls.

“...I think he wants us because we know the most about magic,” Samui says eventually. “You know a smattering of ancient languages and other esoteric bits and pieces. I can get us past any defences.”

The notion that his successes are catching up to him makes Darui uneasy. “Let’s go get ready for tomorrow,” he suggests. “We’ll both need to be in top form, considering where we’re going.”

-O-

That evening Darui sits in a wooden bathtub in the drafty bathroom-slash-shed he shares with nine others. The hot water isn't working again. As he scrubs down, he feels a prickling on the back of his neck.

A quick glance shows that the room is empty, the door is locked, and nobody’s at the window. There’s only one way someone could be looking at him. Darui focuses on his gift, and shivers. A stocky mage with a red face is scrying him, his heavy jowls almost hiding his little pinhole eyes. Before him is a basin with water, the likely focus for the spell.

“I know you can see and hear me, boy,” he says in a reedy voice. “That’s your little trick, isn’t it?”

Darui nods. He feels exposed in the tub, but getting out isn’t an option.

“This is just a friendly check-in, and a reminder that you can’t run or hide from us.” With that, the connection vanishes. Darui waits another second, then sloshes out of the tub and quickly dries himself.

He sleeps poorly, with the ever-present faint smell of ash and distant _ whump-whump-whump  _ of the steelworks seeming harsher than usual. His dreams are of a vast open plain, empty all the way to the horizon, that he searches through for something he can’t remember.

-O-

Samui finds the entrance to the hidden passage easily enough. Darui hops the broken fence after her but it leads into a dead-end yard. In one corner she lifts a few cinderblocks out of the way, revealing a crawlspace between a butcher’s and a glassmaker’s, where the two buildings don’t quite meet. After two minutes of uncomfortable progress on hands and knees Samui pulls a thick plank of wood aside and wriggles through. Darui follows her; it’s a tight fit and he thinks he’s picked up a splinter.

In the gloom, nobody sees them. Darui uses his gift to check for any prying eyes or magical tripwires, but he’s unobserved. Not the first time, he thanks whatever gods are out there.

“Let’s move fast,” Samui hisses. They’re in the ‘dead zone’ at the base of one of the stone spires. Above them is a sheer cliff, crowned with the sprawling estate of a Duke or wizard or something along those lines. And cut into the rock, left behind by a long-dried stream, is a winding passage.

“You’ve got to be joking,” Darui says, but Samui is already climbing. He has no choice but to follow.

The passage is narrow, dirty, dark and full of jagged rocks. The floor is worn smooth by water, and he almost slips a few times. Samui finds the first hanging stalactite with her face, and shouts a few choice words before she remembers to be quiet.

Minutes blur into a single bland and unsatisfying struggle of sweat, stone, dirt and dust. They can’t afford any lights; nobody can know they’re climbing up this way. At two points the stream bed dips out of the mountain and runs along the sheer cliff wall, and the lights of the Undercity are spread out below, dimmed by a blanket of smoke and steam. The frigid wind tries to peel Darui off his lofty perch, but he clings on and inches towards the safety of the tunnel once more.

After hours of climbing, Samui pushes her way past a carpet of roots and out into a thicket of elder trees. Darui rolls out after her and lies on the grass, marvelling at how soft it is. The air is clean up here, and a patch of flowers nearby spreads sweet perfume.

“I became a thief so I  _ wouldn’t  _ have to work hard,” Darui complains as he climbs to his feet. Samui passes him her water bottle without comment, and he takes a deep drink.

Darui’s been sent here because he can tell if anyone sees them, whether through magical or mundane means. Samui is here for a different reason. 

“The front door looks unguarded,” she says. Darui follows her to the main entrance. There’s nobody and nothing there, as far as his gift can tell. He informs her and she nods, then closes her eyes and focuses. He keeps a nervous eye on the dangling drawbridge that leads away to another pillar of rock in the distance. He thinks of his gift as a dog sometimes. Right now it’s sleeping with one eye open.

Samui marches up to the door, hands glowing. A quick tap on the brass door knocker has the whole edifice shuddering, like a horse that’s been stung by a wasp. The huge slab of oak groans open. Darui’s gift stays calm – Samui has had to abort the entry before, when he’s gotten a split-second warning that they’re about to be seen, but not this time.

And that’s why they’re the best pair of burglars in the business. Samui gets them in and Darui keeps them hidden.

-O-

This isn’t the house of some two-bit mage, with a gift and a few small tricks. A wizard lives here – a man whose control over the arcane is absolute. Brilliant light shines from a thousand drops of glass that float like a chandelier above the entrance hall. Instead of stairs, a hovering carpet that can hold a dozen people floats around, rising to the first floor and gently falling to the ground floor again. A dozen suits of polished armour line the hallway to the dining room, where a burnished mahogany table is set with silverware.

The first thing Darui does is stuff some knives and forks in his pockets. They’ve been sent for magical stuff, sure, but he wants a little spending money out of the ordeal.

He takes a closer look at one of the silver spoons, admiring the fine engraving. A single piece of cutlery can buy a few  _ weeks _ of luxury in the Undercity. Samui drains one of the crystal wine goblets in a single pull, then stuffs it into a soft cloth sack.

They don’t stop at the dining room, though. The fireplace is lit, but there’s no wood or coal inside. The flames subsist on empty air, hovering over a slate tile with intricate Etruscan inscriptions. Darui figures out how to switch it off and slides the tile into his bag. His hands are shaking; he’s never held anything so valuable.

“I’ve found something!” Samui shouts. She’s in the bathroom, which has indoor plumbing and a heated tile floor. The bath is missing its warming stones, which Darui knows Samui will have already claimed and tucked away somewhere.

The tiles are staggered, so that each row is offset a little from the rows beside it. But in one part of the floor, there’s the outline of a square, where tiles have had to be cut in half and re-grouted. Darui agrees that it must mean there’s a trapdoor or something underneath, and so Samui charges her gift again and cracks it open.

It’s more violent than either of them expected; shards of ceramic bounce off the ceiling and choking dust fills the room. Once things have settled, they peer down the hole. Darui can feel his greed like a physical force, drawing him towards whatever valuables will be hidden down there. Then he sees what’s inside.

Darui retches.

By unspoken agreement, they back out of the room. “What do we do?” Darui asks.

Samui casts around wildly. Whatever she’s looking for, she can’t find it.

“What do we  _ do? _ ” Darui repeats. “We can’t pretend we didn’t see–” He breaks off the sentence rather than finish it.

Samui looks at him as though she’s seeing him for the first time. “We finish the job and we get out.” Her eyes are too wide and her skin is even paler than usual.

Darui doesn’t want to finish the job. He wants to start on the ‘getting out’ part of the plan as soon as possible, ideally  _ right now _ . But he knows Samui has a point.

They race through the house at a breakneck pace, all the wonder from earlier now gone. The downstairs has nothing else interesting, so they head to the upper floor. Valuables are stuffed into bags and pockets. An endless decanter of wine on the wizard’s bedside table is wrapped in a couple of scarves that are lying around so it doesn’t break, then put with the silverware. Darui finds the study, full of delicate silver-and-glass instruments. Rather than sort through the most potent pieces, he scoops up three crystal balls and a pair of divining rods.

“We’ve got some magic stuff,” he says, terse. “Let’s leave!”

Samui looks over the room one more time and snatches a brass-and-gold wand off a stand in the corner. “Alright, let’s go.”

The flying carpet takes them back down to the ground floor, and Darui spends precious seconds figuring out the command word to disable it. It turns out that the commands are stitched into the material – on, off, up, down, all standard for magic carpets as far as he can tell. When it’s lying flat on the floor, he rolls it up and slings it over one shoulder. It’s supernaturally light but it’s still bulky, and he’s not sure they’ll be able to manoeuvre it through the passage to the Undercity.

Samui is already at the front door, and as she’s about to open it, Darui feels his gift flare up; someone is coming. “Stop!” he shouts and Samui drops her hand from the door knob. “I think someone’s outside. We can’t leave that way.”

There’s a window in the dining room that they can fit through, Darui remembers. Spotting exit routes is an ingrained habit of his after years of petty crimes. They rush through the empty house, ears peeled for the sound of the front door opening.

Darui creeps up to the glass, his gift humming in his veins. There’s nobody watching at the moment, and he quietly levers the window open. He scrambles through, Samui following closely, and just before they shut the window behind them they hear a shout of anger from the entrance.

If that’s the owner of the house, then he’ll be the one who’s responsible for the…  _ situation _ under the bathroom floor.

“Fuck,” Samui hisses.

Darui thinks fast. “Close the window, then follow me,” he hisses. “I have a plan.”

Samui trusts him, but this is a big ask. She mulls it over for a moment then nods sharply. “Go!”

He runs to the edge of the rock pillar this estate is on. It takes him a few seconds to find a spot with no outcroppings between him and the ground. If he were to step forward, he would fall until he reached the Undercity.

Perfect.

Samui is quiet as she runs, but Darui can feel her gaze on his back. He has to work fast. He unrolls the carpet again and activates it with a muttered word, then pushes it forward off the edge of the cliff. It hovers there, unmoving, and he breathes a sigh of relief.

“Hop on, it’s a faster and safer way down,” he tells Samui. They both step onto the carpet and for a second it wobbles under their combined weight, but then it steadies. He speaks the command word for a controlled descent and the carpet goes down. The rough rock walls of the cliffside slip by, and nothing further can be heard from up above.

“I think we might have gotten away with it,” Samui says, her tone disbelieving. “We just need to get down, hide the loot somewhere for a few days and then hand it over, and we’re free and rich.”

Darui is about to agree when a scrying spell slams into place around him. It’s more potent than anything he’s felt before. “He’s watching,” he gasps. The feedback from his gift is  _ painful _ .

The wizard is a skeletal man, tall and spindly with long bony fingers. His eyes are sunken and dark, and his skin glows under the bright light of his ruined study. Worst of all, though, is the snarl on his face. “So this,” he hisses, apoplectic with rage, “is the filth that stole from me.”

Darui shrinks down against the carpet. His face is in shadow, and Samui has pulled her hood up, so he hopes they can’t be recognised. The divination gear in their bags takes on a new light – why did they have to rob the one wizard best suited for tracking them down?

The wizard maintains the spell, and Darui realises he doesn’t know he’s being observed right back. A wriggle of his bony fingers summons a teak staff from out of a sealed and locked cupboard and into his hands. Flames are etched into the dark wood, and the fragment of Sumerian that Darui can make out on the handle is less-than-pleasant.

“We need to hurry,” Darui says, voice as steady as he can manage. “Whoever we just robbed could still catch up to us.”

Samui looks confused, then catches on. “Hypothetically – what might he be doing?”

“Possibly he’s getting weapons right now; we didn’t find everything in the study, after all.” Darui in this moment is eternally grateful for Samui’s quick wits. If the wizard hears a comment about Darui being able to look back up the scrying link, he’ll know he’s lost the element of surprise. Darui doesn’t want to think about what would happen then.

The wizard marches over to the edge of the cliff, right above the spot where Darui set the carpet down. The cliff walls are rolling past at a decent clip, but Darui knows he and Samui are still too close to the estate. It would take another ten minutes or so to drift down to the ground, or about ten seconds of freefall. Death by wizardfire or by falling – neither is an appealing option.

“Up there,” Samui whispers, pointing. At the top of the cliff is a tiny speck of orange. Darui concentrates; the scrying link is still active, probably so the wizard has an easier time aiming.

He’s chanting and waving his staff, which has a growing ball of fire at the end. It’s a malevolent shade of carmine, and it looks  _ hungry _ . “Just a pair of Undercity rats,” he sneers, and with no further fanfare he shoots the fire bolt at the carpet below.

Darui kicks out against the cliffside, and the carpet sways alarmingly. He sees the firebolt grow in size as it nears and he kicks again, frantic. His desperation gives him strength and the carpet pushes off from the rockface just in time for the wizardfire to scorch by, sending a wave of warmth rolling over them both.

The carpet is rocking gently, six feet from the rock of the spire. The cliff face is now out of reach; there’s no way to pull the same trick again. The wizard doesn’t seem too upset, and Darui sees him cast a second time.

The fire or the fall, those are once again the options.

_ Fuck that, _ Darui thinks.

“Sorry about this,” Darui tells Samui, then he speaks the command word that disables the magic carpet. Her answer is sucked away by the same gravity that sends them plummeting towards the cold hard earth. It does nothing to hide the look on her face.

Darui counts in his head. One, two, three, four and he can’t wait any longer. He barks out the command word to activate the carpet, stumbles over the pronunciation, tries again as his heart pounds in his throat and they suddenly slow. He can feel the strain in the carpet – it wasn’t made for this – but then they’re hovering again. Samui sits up and brushes the hair off her face.

“Next time, a warning would be nice,” she says, voice shaky. “At least we’re alive.”

Darui nods. He can’t sense anyone watching; the sudden fall must have broken the scrying spell. With luck, the wizard will need to return to his study to apply it again. “Let’s go the rest of the way down. I want to feel cobblestone under my feet again.”

He looks over the side of the carpet; the ground is only a dozen meters away. He feels sick again as he realises how close they came to dying. He commands the carpet to lower them the rest of the way, then rolls it up again.

“At least we got what we came for. And hopefully that bastard wizard rots in hell.” Samui spits for emphasis. She helps Darui get the carpet and the rest of the loot back through the crawlspace and then they move it into the attic of a long-abandoned barn. It makes for a tidy pile. Nobody will find it here – it’s not the first time it’s played host to ill-gotten goods.

“Alright. I guess we’re done,” Darui says, and tries not to think too hard about what comes next. Perhaps, for the first time in years, he will be free.


End file.
